


Fragments Of Autumn

by Roverlord



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Evil Aaron Cash, Evil Batman, Evil Gordon, Good (almost) everybody else, Mirror Universe, Not Earth-3, Weird references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2019-09-15 15:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16936035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roverlord/pseuds/Roverlord
Summary: Jonathan Crane is an earnest young psychiatrist starting work at Arkham Asylum who, to his horror, discovers that the inmates are being tormented by sadistic billionaire Bruce Wayne (and his costumed alter ego, The Bat Man) who uses the asylum as his own personal playhouse in which he can act out his sick, twisted fantasies.Realizing that the Asylum staff and the local police force are utterly corrupt and turning a blind eye to Wayne's nefarious schemes, Crane puts on a ramshackle costume, calls himself Scarecrow and tries to be the hero who will bring The Bat Man to justice and restore a measure of sanity to Arkham Asylum.





	1. He's A Ghost Story

Wrapped up warm against the icy fingers of dusk, Dr. Jonathan Crane walked towards the parking lot. The trees, dark and forebonding, curved over the path as if they were claws of monsters.

A flock of crows crawed in the distance, a sound which made Jonathan uneasy for reasons he's not going to dwell upon. He walked faster, already seeing his car, when suddendly a shadow the size of a man flashed over him, momentarily eclipsing a large area from the moonlight. Jonathan turned his head quickly, but it was gone, up the path that led back to the Arkham Asylum.

Against his better judgement, Jonathan turned around and started silently chasing after the shadow, which he briefly saw again, momentarily stopping on a tree branch, the dark figure sharp and clear against the full moon. It threw something at Jonathan, the something turning out to be a sharpened stick that stuck his leg, impaling it.

Jonathan screamed in pain, who wouldn't, and spared a glance towards the building up in the hill, surely the guard must've heard something. The man appeared to have, but chosen to not give a shit. As Jonathan crawled behind another tree, he heard the noise the figure's branch made when the creature of the night jumped from a tree to another, another weapon hitting a tree only an inch from the psychiathric's head.

When he looked at the stick closer, he noticed it was not, in fact, a stick, but some sort of a weapon, with a rough silhoulette of a bat carved into it. Jonathan had heard this story. The figure of Gotham's urban legends called ' **The Bat Man** '. The accounts of the figure's origin varied greatly, but most agreed that The Bat Man was once a normal boy whom a tragedy fell upon and went mad or was cursed.

Jonathan Crane was one of those people who don't believe in ghost stories but still feared them. The Bat Man was a such ghost story, and Jonathan was very afraid of him, especially right now.

He was a coward and he knew it. Jonathan bolted out of his hiding spot, dodging another projectile, and ran for his life, the blank white eyes peering in the midst of the autum-colored sprigs above as he scrambled into his car, slammed the door shut, and drove away, and then continued their journey towards the Arkham asylum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback fuels me


	2. The Man With The Glasgow Grin

The very next morning, Jonathan was walking towards his office down the corridor, the place in perpetual darkness save for the few rays of the sun reaching the windows despite the all-blocking trees..

"Hey, Doc, J needs help!" Jonathan was startled and jumped on the side, out of the poker's reach. He immediately felt embarrassed for his jumpiness, but at least his colleagues weren't there to see.

J, the nameless, amnesiac patient, from the room across this one, was more than little crazed and the other doctors were afraid of because of his creepy laugh and strange, nonsensical and unpredictable behavior. He had come to the asylum mouth slit from ear to ear, laughing like a hyena with a crazed look in his eyes, and babbling about bats and red hoods. He was called J because while he didn't know his own real name, his fake ones always started with that letter.

Jonathan carefully peeked from the window to see J straitjacketed, laying on his bed like a wet blanked, literally everything in the room painted red with blood. For a while, Jonathan was too terrified to move, his mind racing with the possibilities and conclusions that got more and more terrifying.

"You're gonna do something, right?.... Right?!" The man in the opposite cell could not have seen inside, but whatever had happened to J, he most likely had screamed from the bottom of his lungs.

If he was even alive.

Jonathan gathered his scraps of courage, and, very slowly, stepped inside the dark room, calling J’s name to let him know he was there, and carefully approached, the omnipresed blood staining his skin and clothes. He carefully poked J's shoulder, immediately backing down a bit when he got a reaction and the man raised his face from the blanket, clearly in pain, and Jonathan was faced with a sight that made him scream.

J's scars were torn open, that's where almost **all** that blood had come from, and there didn't seem to be unbroken bone in his body. The man laughed, pained and scared.

"Bat."

Now, more than ever, more than in any job Jonathan had ever worked, he had wanted to scream again, resign from his job, and run back to his home in south, but forced himself to stay put and silent, wondering why hadn't the guard noticed anything, let alone given J medical attention.

"Bat... Batty bat... Hee hee hee...."

"Calm down, J, calm down. I'll get Harleen."

"What's going on in there?! Is Jack okay?" Jonathan did not know why was Sionis, the one shouting through the wall, here, as he appeared completely sane. Jonathan phoned Dr. Quinzeel and tried to stop the bleeding while he waited, the task made harder by J's constant, crazed giggling. The man wasn't as scary up close as he was through the wall, he just looked freaky and laughed like a madman. When Jonathan had finally gotten the guy to almost stop, Dr. Quinzeel arrived and J started laughing even harder than before and trashing in his straitjacket.

"Stop, Joker" was all Dr. Quinzeel had to say for the man to comply.

"'Joker?'" Jonathan asked, eyeing the inmate on the bed. The name was quite fitting, when J wasn't in the straitjacket, he did strange things and called them 'pranks', and, well, J kind of looked like a monster clown from a horror movie.

"He likes that better than 'John Doe'" Jonathan nodded in adknowledgement.

"The Bat Man!" Jonathan and Dr. Quinzeel looked at each other, unsure about the whole thing. Jonathan had seen The Bat Man with his own eyes, but didn't want to say it aloud, at least not here, as he'd rather not get locked up.

"......Dr. Quinzeel..... Do you believe in The Bat Man?" He asked the woman stiching J's scars shut.

"No, i don't. But somebody or something comes and claws open Joker's scars every night and terrorizes other inmates. Everybody can't have same hallucinations at the same time, it defies both the researches and common sense." Jonathan was speechless.

"And nobody gives a fuck?!"

"This is Gotham. This Arkham, the big boss and everybody important is corrupt. So are the police. Don't try to bring whoever did this to justice. Sionis tried. He's not even insane, he's a political prisoner. Harvey Dent tried. You seen Harvey Dent?"

"...... No?" Jonathan was having a bad feeling about this Mr. Dent, just on the basis of how everybody around him was talking about the man.

"You should take a look some day, unless you're jumpy."


End file.
